Miatta Fahnbulleh: Peckham MP takes energy brief in Burnham’s first Cabinet

Peckham MP Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary, giving one of South London’s newest MPs a major role in Andy Burnham’s first Cabinet.

Her promotion caps a rapid rise: first elected in 2024, she now holds one of the government’s most strategically important briefs.

Fahnbulleh, 46, was born in Liberia and came to the UK aged five after her family fled the country’s civil war in 1986. They were granted asylum in the late 1980s. Her father, Henry Boimah Fahnbulleh, served as Liberia’s foreign minister; her mother is Sierra Leonean. She was named after her aunt, the singer and social activist Miatta Fahnbulleh.

A trained economist, she attended Beechwood Sacred Heart School in Tunbridge Wells before studying PPE at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating in 2000. She later earned a PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics in 2005, writing her thesis on industrial policy in Ghana and Kenya.

Before entering Parliament, Fahnbulleh built a career across government and the think‑tank world: Head of Cities in the Cabinet Office, director of policy and research at IPPR, and then Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation from 2017 to 2023. She also served as a Policy Fellow at Labour Together.

She was selected in 2022 to succeed Harriet Harman in the newly created Peckham seat, winning election in 2024.

Within months she joined the government as a junior minister, first for Energy Consumers and later for Devolution, Faith and Communities.

In May 2026 she became the first minister to resign in the fallout from Labour’s disastrous local election results – a move that positioned her close to Burnham’s camp as he prepared his leadership bid.

Her appointment to the energy brief signals Burnham’s trust in her economic instincts and her long‑standing advocacy for climate action and structural reform.

Fahnbulleh, a Labour and Co‑operative MP, is widely seen as part of the party’s soft‑left tradition and has described herself as a ‘heterodox economist’ – a progressive economist who believes the economy can be redesigned to work better for people and the planet. She will be pushing for a shift in Britain’s economic model.

For Peckham, her promotion brings a rare Cabinet‑level voice – and places a South London MP at the centre of the government’s plans for energy security, green industry and the transition to net zero.

Fahnbulleh’s appointment was greeted with congratulations from Kelly Shields, Co-Chair Southwark Green Party who took the opportunity to urge her not to pursue North Sea oil and gas, which she said would “not help bring down bills but instead lock the country in to decades more fossil fuel dependence.”

The Greens won 13 out of 21 council seats in Miatta’s Peckham constituency in May.

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